She was, no she is, the most important person ever to touch my life. I recall seeing her when I was a little girl. I wandered the department store, the only one in our small town, waiting for my birth mother to get out of work. Chris used to come in the store a lot. I don't know what attracted me to her. She was a lovely British woman with the reddest hair I had ever seen. I lived in an abusive home and I used to follow Chris around the store, hiding behind counters and in clothing racks wishing that she would spot me, say "Oh what a sweet little girl.. I think I will take her home to be mine." But she did not see me watching her.
Years later at the age of 13 I joined a summer theatre group. Things still were awful at home and I loved the idea of being able to escape each day during the summer, ride my bike the 2 miles to the middle school and being in this drama group as we prepared to perform Alice in Wonderland. When I walked in that first day, Chris was there. One day, early on in our activities, I came in quite upset about events of the morning in my "home." Chris apparently saw me go to an empty classroom, crying. She followed me. When I looked up and saw her in the doorway, she said nothing. She simply walked over and held me. I sobbed for a few minutes then looked up at her beautiful face, filled with love and compassion. I was shocked. She was crying. I asked her why she was crying. She said: "Because you are, Lovey"
Chris became my "other mother." For the next thirty years, she was the one I turned to about anything and everything. She was always there. She held me if I cried, she laughed with me and danced with me. She was "the mother of the bride" at my wedding. She was the "grandmother" to my children. She used to joke when introducing me to people that I was her "Unadopted adopted daughter."
The day I called her to tell her my third child was growing inside of me, she hesitated and then told me that something was growing in her as well... Cancer. Two years later the next call came. Her son's wife, Pam was on the other line. "I have been trying to get hold of you for a week. Mum's in a hospice. There isn't much time. YOU have to come NOW."
When I arrived her bedside, I did not recognize her. The entire family was there. Her brother and sister, their spouses and children, Chris' children were there, their spouses and their children, extended family arrived. Everyone agreed, Chris had waited for me. She was not going to leave until I had chance to say good-bye. It was perhaps the first time I lied to Chris. I told her I was fine. I told her that I would be ok without her physical form in my life, that it was time for her to go and be with her husband. I told her it was ok to die.
That night I woke about 2am. I felt as if I was having a hard time breathing. I sat up and struggled. I couldn't take my mind off Chris. Just before 3 am, I felt a release. I could breath easily again. I knew, my Chris was gone. The call from Pam in the morning confirmed everything. She had begun to have real trouble breathing about two am, and just before three, had passed.
A few weeks later, I was wide awake and unable to rest at all. I cried and wished that Chris was still with me. Suddenly I felt as if she was there. I called to her. I could "hear" her voice in my mind telling me she was near me, just "beyond the veil" where I could not see her. She told me she would always be with me. I thought I had lost it. How could I be sure that was Chris and my mind playing tricks. Just as suddenly as I asked the question I was guided to go to the basement to begin a cleaning a job I had planned for the morning. It was like a scene from Diary of Mad Housewife as I decended the stairs to begin the task of purging the basement.
I turned on the light and walked directly to the back of the basement. Still thinking of Chris and what I heard, still wondering how I would ever be certain it had been her. I reached the back of the room and reached up and into a box that lay on a shelf above me. Without even looking inside, I pulled out three envelopes. My heart stopped. There in my hands were three letters, penned some 20 years before, by Chris, to me.
I wept as I sat to read words that still applied to my life and to our relationship. I was especially when repeated throughout the letters were the words: " I will ALWAYS be there for you." And so she is yesterday, today and always.